Us vs Them

The atheist turned Christian apologist C.S. Lewis said there’s no such thing as a person who does bad things for the sake of doing bad things, only people who go about achieving good goals the wrong way. If you think about it, it’s true: at the heart of every crime is the desire to achieve or acquire something positive: security, self esteem, wealth, etc.

One of the fundamental problems with “The War on Terror” is that its architects refuse to acknowledge what it is our adversaries actually want. Our government simplifies the issues to a deliberately vague, nonsensical allegation that “they” hate freedom. But no one hates freedom. In fact, shouldn’t it strike Americans as ironic, if not downright hypocritical, that we are over there with our military attempting to force people into a way of life and government that they don’t desire? Whose freedom is really being compromised here?

True, fundamentalist Islam's vision of the ideal society doesn’t match up with Western principles; but why does it have to? Why are we so certain that our values are universal? Why are we so certain that our ways are better for a culture that’s so different?

These are the questions that Bush & Co. either won’t answer or refuse even to consider. Pondering this reality would force them to take into consideration the diversity and complexity of a region we have an unfortunate tendency to lump together under the heading “The Middle East,” as if our allies, the repressive, fundamentalist monarchy of Saudi Arabia, have much in common with our foes, like the secular, relatively progressive democracy of Iran.

And it’s not just “foes” and “allies,” as if we’re schoolkids playing cops and robbers in the backyard; Bush has neatly divided the middle east into pro-democracy and terrorist factions; but our “pro-democracy” fledgling Iraqi government slammed Israel and loudly praised Hezbollah; Hezbollah itself, while participating in terrorist activities, is also a political organization that holds a significant minority of seats in Lebanon’s secular parliament, and is also a highly organized and effective humanitarian group. Terrorist group Hamas won democratic elections in Palestine. Meantime, the terrorists inside Iraq aren’t really “anti-democracy” so much as they are “anti-each-other,” Sunnis and Shiites battling each other in the streets in order to wrest control of the new government. Bush points proudly to the elections in Iraq as evidence that Iraqis want democracy; perhaps, but they don’t want unity. Shiites voted for Shiites, Sunnis voted for Sunnis, and the Kurds voted to separate.

Nuanced, reality-based understanding would completely undo Bush’s Manichaean “Us/Them” theory of global politics.

The way through this mess is to recognize, as Lewis pointed out, that everyone involved ultimately is in pursuit of something good, something positive: in this case, freedom. Now, we don’t and probably won’t agree on the details, but understanding that at a fundamental level we both want the same thing, we ought to be able to find peaceful, constructive ways forward.

As long as the President continues to insist that “we” are good, and therefore everything we want and do is good, and “they” are bad and everything they want and do is bad, we will continue to have slaughter.

There is no “them.” There is only us.